Is really Unemployment is a reason to join terrorism or an excuse??

For the first Time I totally disagree with the facts by TED. How come we can give unemployment the reason of Terrorism. Charles Kingsley Once Tod that "NO-ONE KNOWS WHAT HE CAN DO, UNTIL HE TRIES"
I mean in today's era of high end needs and technology,it true that unemployment is growing fast and people are getting frustrated but terrorism is definitely not an option. Terrorism is not just a phenomena, its the sick mindset, its like a mental disease,
Nothing can justify of be a reason for terrorism. and even if Unemployment is somehow linked to it, the How can we justify the people with much higher paid salary and have so much riches, and still promoting terror.?????

Closing Statement from Irfan Noori

I am really thankful to all of you for sharing your intellect with me
this conversation, some how Inspires me doing what is being needed in today's era
The best enlightenment with the word TERRORISM
I just use to see its one aspect only
now i can see its diversification.
I thank you all for your support.

Nov 23 2013:
I agree Nadav....desperate people turn to desperate measures. Unemployment alone does not create terrorists, and that is demonstrated by the fact that there are a lot of unemployed people in our world who are not terrorists. Combined with other factors, poverty can, and apparently does contribute to terrorism when there are other factors as well.

Nov 23 2013:
If the Poverty + Unemployment + illiteracy + other factors are the reasons for terrorist activities or anti social activities, then, Dear Colleen, can you please Explain me the facts of Promoting crime by corporate and privileged, or the case of Shoplifting by Rich Kids, or exploitation of staff , or sexual harassment of an employee by the Bosses????

No, in my perception, unemployment is not a reason to join terrorism, and it could be a contributing factor, along with other factors, as I wrote in my previous comment.

Are you now suggesting that " the facts of Promoting crime by corporate and privileged, or the case of Shoplifting by Rich Kids, or exploitation of staff , or sexual harassment of an employee by the Bosses" are related to terrorism? I do not understand what you would like me to explain Dear Irfan.

Nov 23 2013:
These are the sorts of examples which we see in our day to day life.
And my basic point is Howcome we can use Unemployment as a agent to terrorism even as contributing factor.

We've seen or heard or read once that the Terrorist brainwash the kids or spy or people, so I am asking those who are funding for their so called great cause, the ammunition, the camps, the foods, the mobilities, They are for sure rich, powerful. So!! how are they get involve, as they are the main mastermind behind terror activities, hey are the one who are mileading people, they are difinately not unemployed, (though they do target unemployed & poor people) And THEY ARE THE REAL TERRORIST, AND THEY CANT BE GIVEN THE FACTOR LIKE POVERTY OR UNEMPLOYMENT.

Nov 23 2013:
You are not boring Irfan. I am trying my best to understand your question/concern. From what I know about terrorism, which is probably not very much, there are contributing factors, one of which might be, in some situations, unemployment.

I agree with you that those who may be funding terrorism are as much at fault as anyone else, and that is one of the contributing factors. Terrorism probably couldn't continue if it was not funded.

Nov 24 2013:
Irfan, It would appear that the issue here is the word terrorism. Terrorism has no set or accepted definition. It is usually applied to a non-government group opposing political philosophies or practices. The use of extreme force is always a tool used in control. If I go into your community and killer the leader, his family, his dog, and burn his house .... I then hold up his head at a assembly of all residents .... I have your full attention and fear will keep me in line.

Both sides of any conflict point the finger at the other and call them terrorists.

Instead of saying unemployed could you substitute the word poor. If I am rich and support the cause ... I can buy a man to fight for little money ... families are paid for their children to become suicide bombers ...

India is a country of much political strife and in my opinion much political corruption .... there appears to be the very rich and the very poor with few in the middle .... are these the conditions that you are referring to?

I attempted to cover two or three bases with examples to better understand your question .... are any of them close?

Nov 28 2013:
I think it's important to differentiate between a reason and an excuse. Poverty/unemployment may be a reason someone engages in terrorism, but it's not an excuse for it.
I personally liken terrorists to american gang culture more than anything else. In both cases you have older men recruiting younger, disaffected youth to a cause. These leaders target youths who are troubled and vulnerable and offer them something they don't have currently: Belonging, purpose, money, power, hope for a better future for themselves. Those things are surprisingly powerful motivators for young individuals who feel disenfranchised and powerless.
Personally, I think fighting poverty and providing educational opportunities is the best way to fight terrorism. Blowing up things just creates martyrs.

Nov 28 2013:
'I think it's important to differentiate between a reason and an excuse'

To some extend I think so too, yet can both be kept separate since we know that behavior is subjected to conditioning? And don't we often use the concept of 'mitigating circumstances' to take this former separation into consideration by a broader view on cause and effect relations?

And to whom applies this form of 'false' excuse which you introduced? To 'a' terrorist, whose circumstances may have caused his/her behavior, or to 'a' society which allowed those circumstances to develop in the first place? Or for both parties involved?

And aren't 'belonging, purpose, money, power, hope for a better future' the very same desires our official armies target in young people to make them join forces and to even face all consequences in our interest? And don't we often find 'lower class' people as first line bullet catcher in our 'official' conflicts?

And does the concept of 'excuse' really applies to acts of terrorism? Or do we have 'just' reasons on one and not accepted and/or denied justifications on the other side? Does a terrorist need an excuse to do what he/she does? Or does he/she rather have reasons?

You said, that 'blowing up things just creates martyrs' and thats what it does in my view too, yet doesn't it takes living people to bring and keep this elevated status alive and this in accordance to their believes or views of the world? If this was the case, what I think it is, then, is there any 'neutral' education which could alter those believes and views into less violent behavior? Isn't any education biased in someones fashion, even ours?

One may not need to read and write to wear a bomb-jacket and to use it, yet would those skills be able to prevent such usage?

I may be terribly wrong here, yet terrorism seems to me to be of reactive nature, which rises the question what and who caused this reaction in the first place and which part concerning 'guilt' is actually reserved to whom?

Nov 28 2013:
A lot of good observations and questions. I hope I have space to respond!
I think that mitigating circumstance need to be weighted against the crime committed. Does willfully joining a movement to escape hardship really mitigate murder? It is not the same as say, child soldiers who are kidnapped and forced to murder under threat of violence of death. I think that in the case of terrorism hardships are a reason people choose to participate, but it doesn't necessarily mitigate their acts.
Whether something is an excuse or a reason is completely subjective. Criminals always have reasons for what they've done, but to others those reasons are often viewed as excuses. I think people have a hard accepting that a reason is not necessarily an excuse. When it comes to crime I think it is easier for people to believe that criminals always do things simply because they want to do them, or because they enjoy it. Sometimes a reason is just a reason, not an effort to deflect responsibility. I liken it to James's "Varities of Religious Experience" - the experience is real to the person who says they experienced it. It matters little what anyone else thinks.
I completely agree that the tactics for recruitment in the military are very much the same. It is something I found troublesome for a long time. For many reasons.
When I said education I meant general education. Not any sort of anti-terrorism education, just access to education. Math, science, literature, history. Learning doesn't just fill your head with facts, it gives you skills to think critically, to reason things out on your own, and things that can be helpful in employment.
I think the reactive part comes from the leadership who are reacting to various things. They sell a message of someone to blame for their circumstances and an opportunity to right it. You can see this same thing in American politics today in my opinion. Or even in Nazi Germany. It is a popular, and unfortunately, successful means of inciting hate.

I am no jurisconsult, yet naive enough to claim a more generalized definition, by taking another persons life against his/her explicit will. Whereas 'mitigating circumstances' then and only opens wide and changing fields of how to deal with it.

Looking from its result, does it really make a difference when a solider kills an enemy 'legally'? Or a policeman a bank robber? If so, wouldn't the simple act of not accepting 'terrorism' as a legal tactics of asymmetric warfare be a complete 'game' changer? And whose 'side' is to come to decide on this? The 'stronger' one, or those, larger in numbers? It seems as subjective as you named excuse and reason to be, or even worse, if not unfair, as of course 'we' would choose whatever makes 'our' interest succeed. Is this why Justicia is depict blindfolded, as otherwise she would actually see what 'we' are asking her to judge? :o)

I may be totally naive again, yet I believe, that any individual, which grew up loved and cared for and which doesn't suffer from mental illness will have no other need but to be forced into it by external circumstances, to take another persons life. And if that was true, what I think it is, the concept of complicity becomes of high importance and this even for whole societies.

If I take a look at what caused terrorism to the individual freedom of US citizen within the last decade, I honestly question if general education really does create what you assume, at least when horribly generalized. From those terrorists standpoint, their tactics certainly did succeed.

I may be mistaken again, yet terrorist leaders doesn't seem to me to be low educated, on the contrary, as it takes a lot of knowledge and skills to take on an enemy which is way more powerful in terms of resources and military equipment, than when both sides would be equal on those.

And did education hinder the irrational arms race during the cold war?

As a society, or species really, we have always allowed for exceptions in cases of murder. They vary from place to place. In the US insanity, crimes of passion, self defense, and sometimes juvenile offenses are considered as mitigating circumstances. In some middle eastern countries, honor killing are acceptable. Some countries of have the death penalty, and others do not.

Personally, I would agree with your assessment that a person (barring mental illness or other factors of force) has no ethical reason for killing another human. But that is only my opinion.

I don't think terrorist leaders are low educated individuals, but their recruits often are. Just as some gang leaders in the united states are actually college educated. Education makes it harder to be lead. It makes it easier to see when you are being used. And it provides access to better opportunities than terrorism.

Was the cold war really something the individual citizens chose? Or was is chosen for them by their leaders who have their own interests? I fear we're heading down a rabbit hole here, but for how long does an elected government really represent the people? Once they have power and control - who really makes the choices?

Nov 29 2013:
I agree with what you say where the reactive part comes from in the blame-game, yet what frightens me is the fact, that nations even bend their whole legal system in order to match their 'temporary' interests. Nazi Germany to me is the worst example on this, in which even laws against Jews were not only officially introduced yet also acted and judged upon. What if not this misuse of 'justice' generates as much cover for individual misbehavior and perverts? And the educational level at average in those days has been pretty high in my country. So how do we detect this form of misuse today?

Guantanamo Bay, and other more 'secret jails' to me are no good signs for a legal system to be of healthy nature. It hasn't been this way before, yet does those means justify or sell the original ideals of freedom and democracy?

I condemn any form of violence and murder yet it becomes more and more difficult for me to believe, that 'my side' is the one who is doing things right. Not legally, as this is just based on definitions, but morally, which could be based on more valuable constants, such as human rights, which 'we' seem to violate in our interest in many other countries ...

Nov 29 2013:
I don't believe you managed to make me read that, as I usually fall asleep over such artificially awkward forms of languages, or curse like a sailor when I have no choice but to read through... even in my native language. ;o) And although I cursed a bit, and slept a bit, the case itself, once extracted, became pretty clear to my sense of justice. Intentional murder it was, which it would not have been, if all would have freely agreed to draw lots.
But I do not agree with the official explanation of the judgment, and the chosen death penalty rendered the death of the boy even more pointless at the end.

Yet doesn't the fact that exceptions in case of murder vary in place and time is what makes justice vulnerable against official misuse? And if its about terrorism, which usually is of political motivation, doesn't this fact alone renders all judges of a given society against which terror is used, biased in their opinion by definition?

How can a judge, who is an integrated part of the very society a terrorist group opposes against, be neutral in the sake of justice? I personally think, no involved judge can, which makes me believe, that in terms of terrorism, only an international court was able to provide the most neutral environment in which such cases should be dealt with.

'Education makes it harder to be lead.'

I agree with that, yet this is usually a two-edged sword, as in return it encourages any ruling class to use dirty tricks and misinformation to get educated societies to move in their direction. And I would be happy if you could prove me wrong on that.

Maybe I don't fear rabbit holes as much as I fear unnoticed manipulation, which, unfortunately, seems to spread more vividly today than ever.

In any true democracy, there can not be any 'own interest' of their elected leaders, which is a contradiction in itself. And regarding the irrational arms-race, it usually helps to follow the money to find those in whose interest this was. No majority, I suppose.

Nov 27 2013:
I am believing that only lazy loser may call him self jobless. In any society at any time if you want (just want) you can find a job and can find money to live. Unemployment can never be an excuse to become a bloody murderer! As about terrorism, this is just an instrument in the hands of modern dirty politicians. No more, no less.

Nov 24 2013:
It seems you are not familiar with the relativistic aspect of the term 'terrorism' and that it is a strategy, a tactic, which can only be used, yet never joined.

Try to join a 'castling' in chess and you may know what I mean and it may also become clear, that the calling for 'war on terror' is not just plain stupid, yet also draws strong correlations to fight windmills and the mindset it takes for such a venture... :o)

To what terrorists are you specifically referring to? And why as terrorists and not as freedom fighters, as which they can also be seen, depending from which side of the barricade you are looking from?

Did you know that members of the French Resistance were seen as terrorists in Nazi Germany at that time of German occupation of France? And do you think that Nazi Germany was right in naming them as such?

To think of just one reason as the source of resistance, or terrorism is quite naive I would say, yet blends nicely in the overall simplification about it.

Any resistance I know of has a reason to use asymmetric warfare strategies to get their goals realized and as soon as you call someone a terrorist, yet don't know about his/hers original reasons and goals, you can be very certain about the fact, that you yourself have been manipulated by 'your' side (including media & government).

I am pretty surprised how little people actually know about a specific 'terror' and about the 'other story' of those who use this strategy, as to understand a conflict, how can they ever side when they know only one side of the coin?

What if 'we' are part of the reason for 'their' resistance?

And isn't it interesting, that comparable levels of terror and brutal violence of drug cartels in Mexico and/or Honduras is not coined the same way? Maybe because there is less political motivation involved to use the term terrorists?

So we may start asking those we call terrorists, why they do what they do, and maybe this understanding becomes then part of solutions?

Nov 24 2013:
Explaining your point is good.
To elaborate I'd like to remind you about Nelson Mandela
He was assumed and treated as terrorist and later he was awarded Noble prize for peace for the same.......

So let us acquire real definition of Terrorism::
Going Against the government rules of Protesting for freedom.... I simply don't considering it as terrorism

BUT!!!!!

making these cause as a mere excuse and then creating fear among innocent rather to government.... Is it really justified

Secondly, i am well aware of chess and castling, so can you please tell me to save the game is their any provision to go off the board or moving a rook diagonally, making a knight to step back, or bishop straight???

Terror as strategy is currently not available in international chess rules and one of the reasons may well be, that this war game is plain symmetric - at least at its beginning.

Also the definition of 'innocents' has always been difficult at times of war and many civilians have been and will be directly targeted by regular soldiers. May this be to destroy the general moral (which usually doesn't work, on the contrary) or because military targets are embedded within civil infrastructure, which they usually are.

From a humanistic standpoint it doesn't make any difference if a civilian dies by a suicide bomb attack, or because the GPS coordinates of his place of death got coincidentally close to a cruise missile 'surgery' attack. The result is the same, and both could be named terror.

Nov 29 2013:
Not both could be, indeed both are the forms of terror,
and terror in global scenario can not be limited by some specification,
In my perception. Terrorism can not be tagged solely to one end, it is joined and interconnected with both ends.
U've some differences the fight in between yourself, why the hell there are innocent like on stake, it doesn't matter to me that the source of death is by some shithead suicide bomber or by the most pathetic drones, it should and must be limited to their entity and compulsory out of bound from the innocent lives.

Nov 24 2013:
I agree that terrorism seems to be a mind set, an internal condition. Some people just tend to blame others for their misfortunes and get angry. This behavior can be seen everywhere - road rage, bullying, etc. One can say that unemployment makes such people angrier, but so does a traffic jam or a long line in a grocery store.

If you heat a dynamite stick, it can blow up. So, yes, there seem to be a link between the heat and the explosion. But dynamite can blow up also in the absense of heat. And other substances can explode as well. The business of finding "root causes" of things can be tricky.

Nov 23 2013:
I suggest unemployment is not the main reason for terrorism; it is political, as most of what I've heard is the terrorists consider themselves as freedom fighters. They want control of a country or region and maybe they have their theories of how to better manage or constitute a country.

I do believe unemployment is a major factor for crime, as people turn to stealing as a part time job. Idle time can lead to lowering of self esteem leading to psychological issues. Stresses lead to conflicts and deteriorating relationships; murders increase and prisons become overcrowded. Continuing unemployment robs people of their ability to sustain their families and many turn to alcohol and drugs to deaden realities and hope.

Unfair unemployment and unequal access to resources and services are factors in the mid-east. It seems far better for everyone concerned to compromise and try to resolve issues peacefully than to be recalcitrant and stubbornly attempt resolution with proven unproductive violent methods. All sides are contributing to the maintenance of continuing conflict. Eventually, if no compromise is possible, one side losses and the other vanquishes.

Nov 23 2013:
That's not entirely correct.
Being miserable is one of the things that drive people to extreme acts like terror. In a society with decent standards of living, the only people who engage in things like terror and murder are the mentally ill, and the odd psychopath. Few and far apart, statistically speaking.

In a society which isn't quite so prosperous on the other hand, things are different. People have less to loose, and more to be upset about. Depression is more common (especially helpful for recruiting suicide bombers--where you and I would recommend a therapist, they recommend an explosive vest), and aid to families post mortem has greater economic significance.
It doesn't help that many terror groups also double as militias, and in more lawless regions, militias are effectively the ruling class. In that scenario, joining a terrorist group raises one's standards of living. Some people join for political, religious or ideological reasons, true, but many others join out of more rationally self motivated reasons.

Unemployment isn't the only cause of poor quality of life, but its certainly a factor. A content populace does not turn to terror for the same reasons they do not revolt. It takes misery for it to truly catch on--otherwise, the terrorists remain as small fringe groups that are quickly eradicated, or simply never grow influential enough to cause real harm (statistically speaking--every death is a tragedy, but it takes a little more than that to make an impact on something the size of a nation).

Nov 28 2013:
I believe unemployment is not a reason for terrorism. The Gaza strip has a population of 1.6 million with a 40%unemployment rate. Also, the question of education, an article in the New York Times indicate that the majority of the terrorists that attacked Western targets were college educated. I believe some had jobs also.

Nov 29 2013:
The Gaza strip is lousy with terrorists, actually. In addition to several smaller jihadist groups, Hamas, the biggest of the terrorist/militia organizations in the area actually serves as a government in addition to its terrorist activities.

The primary difference in origins between the terrorist/militia hybrid and the small cells of terrorists operating mostly on their own in western countries is primarily in education and standards of living. Where standards of living are high, only the odd group of nut jobs turns to terror, which is why the number of terrorists in such regions is quite low.
In regions where the populace is poorly educated and standards of living are low, the terrorist groups often grow big enough to become major political and military movements, containing many rational and in many ways normal people in numbers far greater than can be supported by the "odd nut job" demographic. This is where we get groups like Hezbollah or the Taliban, that simply don't develop where quality of life is high.

Nov 26 2013:
Let's looked at Al Qaeda, with its originator Usama Bin Laden. Bin Laden, of course, is universally recognized as the ultimate terrorist and he is definitely not unemployed or poor. Even the suicide bombers recruited and trained by the Al Qaeda organization are not necessarily unemployed or poor. Some of them are probably lured by cash rewards, but many of them are too young or are not laid off by employers ( they are either never worked, or are employed when they join the Al Qaeda.) The basic premise for the terrorist intention is usually the discontent to the society as a whole or to a part of it.I would say that the majority of these feelings are not necessarily related to personal conditions such as unemployment or poverty. Furthermore, the terrorists executing these atrocities are the foot soldiers of Bin Laden or his deputies. Bin Laden himself, the one who is ultimately responsible for, or ordered, the terrorist attack, is never hateful to the rich people (he actually was one of them), rather, he is generally against the decaying western civilization or infidels according to Islam religion. On the other hand, vast majority of the poor or unemployed usually use rioting or protesting as an expression of their anger or dissatisfaction. So I am not quite sure there is any definite relationship between the unemployment and terrorism.
As to the question of mass slaughter of a particular ethnic group is concerned, I don't see there is any qualitative difference between the mass killing of Jews by Hitler, or mass killing of Chinese by Chairman Mao or the accumulative killing, by Al Qaeda, Harqqani or Omar of Taliban among the Muslims themselves..

Nov 26 2013:
Nothing can justify terrorism, but no one can keep person in despair from their desperate effort to survive. Of course, there are another way to overcome devastating situations but we should not neglect that terrorism is somehow linked with unemployment. Just like Jean Valjean in Les Miserables, some people commit crime to survive or, at least, to support their family. However, this is not the problem of justification because people who commit a terror hardly put their purposes on terror itself but financial aid from their commander - Al Qaeda, for instance. Encourgement to young people who tries to find hope with new perspectives is needed, not a criticism to terrorists who chose to change their life with money.

Nov 25 2013:
Irfan, I agree with you that terrorism is most likely linked to sick or abnormal mindset, and unemployment happens to be linked with terrorism by some marginal or indirect effect. For example, Adolf Hitler certainly could be classified as a terrorist, because he killed lot of Jews who never make or declare war on him or Germany. He may say that he was acting for the mass of unemployed German workers' welfare, but even that couldn't be justified for the mass murder of all the Jews whether they were the exploiters of the economy in Germany or not. Of course his stated reason was the purification of the Aryan race. Therefore most of the terrorism acts always use the unemployment or poverty as the excuse for terrorist behavior.
Now let's turn on the government policy on welfare for the poor, especially those who are helpless because they are orphaned, abandoned or incapable of work, or temporarily out of work because of the shutdown of his/her workplace. I am all for the safety-net welfare for these people by the government. However, the unemployed, in desperation, usually would try to steal or pilfer food or other necessities, but rarely resort to killng innocent people. In my opinion, we should separate the terrorist mentality from the minor criminal act for survival by the unemployed. An unemployed could be acting like a terrorist, but that should be a coincidence, rather than a one-to-one linkage of the cause-and-effect certainty. Of course, the reverse cause-effect could likely be true that the terrorist behavior of an employee is more likely to be fired from his/her job, and then s/he turned around and committed mass murder in his/her former workplace due to his abnormal hatred mentality.

Nov 25 2013:
Terror is use of fear induced by violence to achieve a political end.
The holocaust isn't an act of terror, its an act of genocide. Two very different things.

If you look at where most major terrorist groups reside nowadays, you'll find them in places like Somalia, Palestine, Afghanistan, Lebanon and Chechnya. You'll notice that the common denominator between them is that those are areas with very poor standards of living (one of the causes of which is unemployment).
Most of them are driven to it by desperation as opposed to mental illness. Otherwise, those organizations would have remained very small and a lot less substantial--there aren't that many violent mentally ill people in the population, percentage wise.

Nov 23 2013:
Please, lets not dwell to much on the behaviour, it tends to blurry most peoples perception of individuals. Behaviour is part of the problem, but not the main source. Truth of the matter is, all behavioural violence is born out of some sort of deprivation. Majority of violent offenders have themselves been victims of their own attempted murders, sexual abuse, torment, or inhuman living conditions. These people have simply not been given an adequate environment to develop in, and as a result the development of the brain and mind is maladaptive. This is the true essence of human behaviour and human development, i suggest you start hear to answer some of the other related issues such as unemployment's impact on human health.

Nov 23 2013:
The privileged ones are not as privileged as you think, they may have more material possessions, but their interpersonal relationships and subjective experiences are just as skewed. Proximal abandonment, which is the term used to describe someone being physically present, but emotionally absent, I think would be the best example to describe the parenting environment and the type of relative deprivation people (especially young) of all classes regardless of material wealth are subject to, some more than others.

This would explain why even children of wealthy families go down the wrong paths, even their emotional needs where not met adequately as children and/or adolescence.

Nov 23 2013:
Makes sense to me and the Ted Talk is not the only place I've heard this.

In this context I remember an old story about an American whaling ship and a few IRA exiles in Austrailia. The Americans rescued them and took them to Boston Where they soon had jobs and lost all interest in the movement.
Heck, they might have just as well stayed in Australia. Jobs and just as nice. So much for revolution and a full stomach. Doesn't happen.